Last week, Alameda County prosecutors announced charges against seven current and former Bay Area police officers who allegedly had illegal contact with a sexually exploited teenager — or knew about the exploitation and did nothing to stop it.

The charged include five current or former Oakland officers, one former Livermore officer and one former Contra Costa County sheriff’s deputy.

The charges included oral sex with a minor, misusing computer databases and obstruction of justice. A total of 16 incidents of criminal conduct are alleged.

These numbers seem too low to register as adequate.

The exploited teen, who goes by the name Celeste Guap and is now 19, told The Chronicle she had sex with 29 officers in the Bay Area in the past two years and that her relations with at least four officers occurred when she was a minor. Along with the alleged offenses in Alameda County, potential offenses occurred in Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Joaquin counties.

In Alameda County, the prosecution will count on Guap’s testimony. But as of Monday morning, she was sitting in a Martin County, Fla., jail on the suspicion of battery after allegedly biting a security guard at a rehabilitation center.

Photo: Courtesy KGO-TV

Celeste Guap

Celeste Guap

The assistant state attorney in Martin County said Monday that he is charging Guap with misdemeanor battery.

While current and former officers huddled with their representatives to figure out the next move, Guap was sitting behind bars, 3,000 miles away.

Why is she even in Florida when there are treatment centers in California where Guap could’ve been taken?

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley said at the news conference that her office protested Guap’s “removal from California where she could receive the services she wanted and requested.”

Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle

Oakland Police Officer Giovanni Loverde, seen here in 2014 as as cadet, will be charged with felony oral copulation with a minor according to an announcement by Alameda District Attorney Nancy O’Malley at a news conference on Sept. 9.

Oakland Police Officer Giovanni Loverde, seen here in 2014 as as...

“An agency outside Alameda County made arrangements to send her out of state, against our wishes and and advice,” said O’Malley, who said her office would pay for Guap’s return flight.

As authorities on this coast dodge responsibility for how Guap ended up in Florida, authorities on the opposite coast bask in the warmth of the media spotlight.

Guap is still being exploited.

“There is a human being on the other side of this story,” Oakland City Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan told me. “There’s also a human being here who’s still being abused.”

That’s how many months it took for Oakland to notify the Alameda County district attorney’s office that it was investigating possible criminal wrongdoing by its police officers, O’Malley said.

An investigation needs to be launched into why it took so long. The department is supposed to notify the district attorney’s office of any incident that might involve criminal conduct by an officer.

Eight months of secrecy and only seven total Bay Area officers, with five from Oakland, charged?

The numbers don’t add up.

Even if they didn’t engage in criminal activity with Guap, how many officers knew about it? What is the depth of internal decay inside the department? Which personnel need to be removed before someone can be brought in to rebuild?

How can a bridge of trust between Oakland and its residents be built when police officers operate with such disregard for the law?